Midnight Run

It was sixty-two degrees yesterday and got as low as forty-three degrees at night, but you wouldn’t know it from Alice, who resides in Verdi Square in Manhattan. I use “reside” generously, as Alice is homeless and has been for the past three months. Her demeanor was anything but that which I would expect from a homeless woman; she was friendly, comical, even gregarious, and utterly willing to discuss her current state.

“I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t gamble, I don’t have sex, I don’t do any of that stuff,” she told my partner and me during our Midnight Run. “I want to live a wholesome life with good people. I may be homeless, but I still have my dignity.”

Not exactly what you’d expect to hear from a woman on a bench with a cart beside her.

Silence

I attended a silent retreat this past weekend with Fordham's Campus Ministry, and it was wonderful, so filled with meaning and reflections of God's love. Fordham owns a retreat house in Goshen, New York that is absolutely gorgeous (it's both creatively built and large) and it was the perfect place to a break from busy life. Of course, silence didn't hurt, either. It was good to spend a weekend without my own yammering! I spent a lot of time reflecting, praying, thinking and reading Living Simply in an Anxious World. In the words of another woman on the retreat, it was "sweet times."

Of course, I was able to snap a few fall photos, as well.

Showering

About two months ago, two high schoolers from my youth group asked if they could host their baby shower at my house. I agreed and so, in addition to school work and finals, my time since then has been filled with budgeting, planning, shopping, decorating, and various other baby shower prep tasks. It's been somewhat of a roller coaster ride, but we pulled it off!

Congratulations, Chris and Carol!

From the Pews in the Back

I just got back from a lecture put on by Fordham's American Catholic Studies program. However, this was not just any lecture, this lecture was insightful, emotional, truthful, challenging and definitely blog-worthy.

So here it is. A bunch of women wrote essays about what it means to be a modern woman in the Catholic Church and they were compiled into a book. The editors -the guests of the lecture- had amazing insight and brought up challenges that we Catholic women can't help but grapple with: how to raise Catholic kids, how to stand up to an institution that makes women inferior and, most of all, how (and why!) we're staying Catholic amidst our issues with the church! A panel of Fordham students (who were also Catholic women) shared their thoughts, and they, too, were great.

I've written before about how Fordham is Catholic, and it's something that I'm always sure to bring up on tours, to prospective students, etc. But what does it mean, really, to be a Catholic woman in a church where women cannot be ordained, where they are not included in the second Eucharistic prayer, where they (we!) are ignored in the petitions??? We are too smart to not notice any of this. And we're way too smart not to care.
In the good spirit of caring, and of critical discussion, I ask YOU:
What are YOUR thoughts/opinions on this????

For more about the stuff of tonight's lecture, check out http://fromthepewsintheback.com/
and fordham.edu for the video of the actual event!